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I am running OsX Panther. I also asked if this happens because of the way SMB works. My concern is that many inexperienced windows users on this network aren't in any way aware that their data is not secure.

IMHO, Since Microsoft has a part in both mac and win, you would be able to see anybody's folders, I'm pretty sure this is because of samba, even if they have windows, because Mac and Win has been designed to communicate with each other pretty easily. In this case, it is because each workgroup, and your computer, is trusted in the network. If you think that the other tenants in your apartment wouldn't want to share the stuff they are sharing, there lies a huge security problem and they should be alerted.

How many tenants are connected to the network in your building? Is the person in charge of your network administration your landlord? If so, I've had a similar problem, but chances are, your landlord probably either has a lack of security knowledge or someone in your building is playing tricks, or your admin. planned it this way(I am doubtful of this though).

If any of what I suggested is the case and you don't think it should happen, I would say first find a neighbor to double check this before you tell your landlord/admin. and tell him/her that you, and others, have the ability to view peoples shared folders. With this, and a little problem solving, you and your admin could easily resolve this problem.

Hope this gave you a little more insight.
-mungie

I believe in making the world safe for our children, but not our childrenís children, because I donít think children should be having sex. -- Jack Handey

I have had the fun of getting both MAC (running os X) and PCs (running Windows XP pro) to see each other's network shares. The MAC had little problem seeing the PCs but the PCs had trouble seeing the MAC until I MANUALLY turned on a setting on the MAC in the network properties. I forget exactly what it said, but it was something like 'enable windows sharing' so the PCs could see the MAC.

You should be set from them seeing you on the network. If they can't figure out what to do then the easiest thing they can do is install a software firewall. They can do more but that will take some fun edjumidakation.

OS X, now has native SMB capabilities, and although you CAN run Samba on it, you have to use one or the other. I believe that WinXP home will also often times create a Shared Folder when a user uses the Network Wizard to join a network.

-Maestr0

\"If computers are to become smart enough to design their own successors, initiating a process that will lead to God-like omniscience after a number of ever swifter passages from one generation of computers to the next, someone is going to have to write the software that gets the process going, and humans have given absolutely no evidence of being able to write such software.\" -Jaron Lanier

By default OS X now uses SMB for connecting to networks. This makes sense as Mac, Unix/Linux, and Windows can all talk SMB with OS X.

Windows XP does have default shares, as was rightly said earlier on, it can also have its shares set to not need any authentication to access them. This is something that so many people forget about. It could be that these windows users have not set there permissions up correctly for their shares and this has left an entry for 'everyone' which is set to 'full access'.

Originally posted here by muert0 Can you remotely connect to any of them using the remote desktop in XP?

All things considered, you could using a windows emulator such as Virtual PC, or possibly a VNC client, but it will require great patience and determination. To my knowlege there is no remote desktop client as such that can cross platform. It'd be great if Apple would get around to adding a feature like that to their remote desktop app; I sure could use it!